Artificial Intelligence

What Hacker News says

1. padraigfApr 2024
   A few thoughts (for context, senior developer, and use chat-gpt every day as an assistant)...

   In the short-term (5-10 years, I cant see them autonomously producing products), it will need an experienced programmer to interpret and use the output effectively.

   An implication of this is, in the short-term, developers become even more valuable. You still need them, and these tools will make the developer significantly more productive.

   I was reading Melanie Mitchell's book 'Artificial Intelligence: A guide for thinking humans' recently (which I'd recommend). She has this chapter on computer-vision. And as an example, she shows a photograph of a guy in military clothing, wearing a backpack, in what looks like an airport, and he's embracing a dog. She makes an insightful point, that our interpretation of this photograph relies a lot on living-in-the-world experience (soldier returning from service, being met by his family dog). And the only way for AI to come close to our interpretation of this, is maybe to have it live in the world, which is obviously not such an easy thing to achieve. Maybe there's an analogy there with software development, to develop software for people, there's a lot of real-world interaction and understanding required.

   In terms of autonomously producing products, I see these tools as they are now a bit like software wizards, or a website that Wordpress will create for you. You get a 'product' up-and-running very quickly, and it looks initially fantastic. But when you want to refine details of it, this is where you get into trouble. AI has an advantage over old-fashioned wizards, in that you can interact with it after the initial run, and refine it that way. But I'm not sure this is so easy, to have that fine-grained control you have with code. This is where I see the challenge being, to develop tools to talk to it, and refine the product sufficiently.

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2. rramadassNov 2023
   > Then it should be a fundamental mission of people who DO have technical knowledge to spread the word on both the negative and positive effects of AI.

   Researchers have done so. One good resource is Melanie Mitchell's book Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans (i presume a 2nd edition is in works to incorporate LLMs/ChatGPT etc.) Also checkout her videos on youtube.

   The problem is that technologically clueless vested interests in the business/media push sound bites to the already distracted public thus distorting everything.

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3. rramadassFeb 2023
   Very well said!

   I think this applies generally to everything AI related. The common man has no idea, does not think and is easily fooled by all the hype.

   However, my fear is that AI generated content masquerading as Knowledge will become mainstream sooner rather than later. How we as a Society deal with it is yet to be defined.

   PS: Melanie Mitchell's Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans is a must read for the "common man".

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4. throwawayAI39May 2021
   If you are looking for some level-headedness on the topics of AI, self-driving etc, here are some recommendations:

   Book suitable even for lay people, written by someone who has been working for years in this field:

   [1] Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans by Melanie Mitchell

   People to follow:

   [2] https://twitter.com/missy_cummings/

   [3] https://twitter.com/rodneyabrooks/

   [4] https://www.twitter.com/MelMitchell1/

   Edit: For criticism of Elon Musk and/or Tesla:

   [5] https://www.elonmusk.today/

   [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Tesla

   [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lawsuits_involving_Tes....

   [8] https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/04/surely-we-can-do-bett...

   [9] https://troll.tv/videos/watch/54bc7bd0-8691-4359-aa7d-dc5148...

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5. throwaway77112May 2021
   Videos of Tesla fails, mostly from 2021:

   [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=antLneVlxcs

   [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uClWlVCwHsI

   [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ozx5R-P9zM

   [4] https://twitter.com/olivercameron/status/1319835514887831552

   [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29GZg4gGMMM

   Other things:

   [1] https://www.elonmusk.today/

   [2] a video which was taken down from youtube

   https://troll.tv/videos/watch/54bc7bd0-8691-4359-aa7d-dc5148...

   [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Tesla

   [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lawsuits_involving_Tes....

   Bonus material:

   [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsKwMryKqRE

   Edit: For saner info regarding self-driving, A.I etc:

   [1] https://twitter.com/missy_cummings/

   [2] https://www.twitter.com/MelMitchell1

   [3] https://twitter.com/rodneyabrooks

   [4] book to read, suitable even for laypeople >> 'Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans by Melanie Mitchell

   IMO everyone should read that book

   Edit 2: Children of the Magenta Line

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ESJH1NLMLs

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6. benjaminoglesDec 2020
   I experienced the same thing. Waiting for recommendations from similarly minded people helped me get past it.

   I didn't read any non-fiction for a long time before I was given a book as a gift [0] that was really good. Since then, I have received a few other recommendations that I enjoyed [1-2].

   [0] Artificial Intelligence by Melanie Mitchell

   [1] Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths

   [2] The Theoretical Minimum Series by Leonard Susskind

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